I will never forget the first Canadian medical tourist I interviewed. I was gripped when this person told me about travelling abroad for invasive surgery, accompanied by their spouse. While in India, this spouse required emergency surgery to address a chronic condition that had worsened.

This situation sounded so distressing and the researcher in me wondered: Could the mental and physical stress of caregiving in an unfamiliar, international context have negatively impacted the spouse’s health to the point that surgery was required?

For most of the last decade I have been involved in extensively studying medical tourism. I have spoken with patients, policy-makers, doctors, nurses, tourism officials, travel operators and many others in well over a dozen countries. Much of this research has examined ethical and equity questions related to medical tourism. For example, trying to understand if and how local patients, health-care providers and health systems can benefit from medical tourism in the Caribbean.

One thing I have learned is that many medical tourists do not travel on their own. Many travel with a friend or family member.

Friends and family provide support and companionship. They serve as a source of familiarity and comfort. They can assist with very practical matters, such as confirming travel plans and keeping people at home informed about the medical tourists’ health status. My own research has found that these roles and responsibilities can be quite extensive.

I would like to take a step back and offer a more critical perspective on this practice of informal caregiving by friends and family members in the context of medical tourism.

Clinics, hospitals and entire countries are actively trying to attract medical tourists through costly advertisement campaigns and other promotional efforts. But what about the friends and family who accompany them?

Accompanying a friend our relative for health care overseas — which often means taking care of their every need — can be physically, psychologically and emotionally exhausting.(Shutterstock)

I rarely see mention about friends and family in the brochures, websites, e-mails and trade shows that advertise medical tourism services.

There is no formal guidance on what they can expect while they are abroad. No formal resources to prepare them to do things like change wound dressings in hotel rooms or navigate airports with someone recovering from surgery.

These friends and family are, in many ways, “shadow workers” in a multi-billion dollar global industry.

I was recently involved, with a research team, in interviewing Canadians who had accompanied a family member or friend abroad for medical tourism. Their stories contained very important pieces of advice for people considering taking on this role. We gathered this advice together and published it in an academic article.

Accompanying a friend our relative for health care overseas — which often means taking care of their every need — can be physically, psychologically and emotionally exhausting.Author provided (No reuse)

Read, share, discuss

The information sheet we developed can be shared widely. The text can be copied and pasted freely onto the websites or promotional materials of clinics and hospitals seeking to treat medical tourists.

The global medical tourism industry relies on the unpaid labour provided by patients’ friends and family members. Their unpaid labour needs to be acknowledged. Their needs must be assessed. Their health and safety needs to be protected.

I push for these things to happen when I meet with medical tourism sector representatives, and I call on others to push for the same.

Up to 80 per cent of community care for older adults is provided by unpaid informal caregivers. In the absence of government supports, many of them struggle with exhaustion, stress and depression.
(Shutterstock)